How to improve your digital tourism skills

In the tourism industry digital skills are becoming increasingly important as the workplace develops. Therefore, being fluent in these digital tourism skills is more in demand than ever and employers are now constantly on the lookout for employees with them. This digital demand can be seen in the industry, which is why digital workers are becoming  increasingly valuable, and employers are pushing for more skills in the industry.

Life-long learning: the key to improving digital tourism skills

 

Creating the mind-set of life-long learning within yourself is the key to constantly improving digital tourism skills. This is because the tourism industry is changing and progressing so rapidly that you may fall behind unless you are constantly learning. A life-long learning approach will encourage you to adopt new skills and technologies whilst working in the industry.

 

To have a life-long learning approach focus on challenging yourself and try to regularly update you digital tourism skills by, for example reading digital skills blogs, watching relevant videos and taking some classes. This would allow you to quickly adopt relevant trends and make necessary changes in your workplace without needing to commit to a structured and expensive full-time course.

 

Digital Skills in content creation

 

As the next generation of tourists are using more online platforms and apps to receive content and make decisions it is crucial for organizations to adapt and provide information this way. In 2019, eDay covered how important it is to share the right content on the right platform.

 

A way to ensure that the most effective content is on the right platforms is first to consider the message you wish to share. Find the relevant channels that the audience of said message uses regularly to find similar content and create a compatible concept (i.e does the platform allow video use etc.). Next you must analyze how your intended audience engaged with the content. Ask questions like ‘What lessons can you learn from this?’ and ‘How can you improve the concept for next time?’ Identify any lessons that you can learn, and implement changes you could make to ensure you communicate effectively. To develop these digital tourism skills, you need to self-reflect to ensure that you are improving it effectively and in the way that best suits your audience.

 

The Next Tourism Generation project researched the future of digital, green and social skills in tourism where it is highlighted how digital skills with content creation is becoming increasingly more crucial as time goes on. Content creation becoming a part of your digital tourism skills will ensure that you are more capable of adapting to new audiences, platforms and apps as they emerge which shows that you are becoming more digitally fluent, which as discussed earlier, is in demand by employers.

 

How you can improve digital skills

 

Another way for you to improve your digital tourism skills is to learn niche tourism program technologies. For example, if you regularly work closely with tourists, learn how to use the latest point of sale (POS) systems to stay up to date. Teach other colleagues these niche technologies as well if they are unsure as this will help to solidify your own knowledge.

 

Sign up to and take online courses that are relevant to digital skills that you are perhaps lacking or less comfortable with. A useful free online tool that you can use to develop your digital skills is Google Digital Garage where you can learn the basics of online skills and increase your digital tourism skills. Google Digital Garage could also help you to identify where your current digital skills are lacking.

 

Since 45% of the most searched for questions related to the tourism industry being linked to the impact of coronavirus and travelling as soon as possible safely, it is clear that improving digital skills will help organizations stay on top of the trends to quickly adapt to new demand. Therefore, staying up to date with your own digital skills is key to being able stay on top of the industry and remain as a strong competitor continually.

 

So, it is clear that it is important to brush up on and remain digitally fluent in the tourism industry. Therefore, make sure you find out how digitalization within the tourism industry can impact you, your career role and goals. And, as you focus on improving your digital tourism skills, make sure you also challenge yourself by becoming a visual designer too!